About

Breakaway Football is a 2-player, card-driven strategy game where you are the Head Coach of an American football team making all Offensive and Defensive play calls.

Using realistic football strategies, your play calls will create opportunities for exciting big plays called "Breakaways" to take advantage of your opponent's call.

Play Cards

Plays are color-coded (orange = run; blue =pass) and printed in a mirrored layout to allow "audibles," real-time play changes at the "line of scrimmage" right before the play is resolved. Simply rotate your card 180 degrees before the snap to change your play and catch your opponent off guard!

The card art that is on the game board is the one that gets resolved.

Breakaway Football Game Board

Just like real football, strategy counts more than luck. But the randomness of real football is create by the "Game Day Deck." Game Day cards add or subtract from specific types of calls, and can adjust the play up or down if the Game Day card play event matches a coach's call.

Game Day Cards

Big plays called "breakaways" can occur when one team counters their opponent's play call perfectly. Breakaways on Offense can chain together Game Day cards for longer plays, like a Short Pass beating a Blitz for a sizable gain. Breakaways on Defense can kill a drive or even create a turnover!

Choose from 10 types of Offense play calls, each with different strengths, to confuse your opponent. Your decisions will lead your team to victory!

We'd love to share our journey with you! We wrote a blog documenting our experience in the design and development process. How did we come up with the idea? How long did it take to crystallize? What problems did we run into and how did we solve them? All is revealed in the two blog posts below, written by Arthur Franz IV!

We've already sourced printing quotes from a number of overseas printers, and are leaning heavily toward using Print Ninja due to their customer service, price point, and the quality of the samples they sent us.

Our goal is to produce high-quality games for years to come. We started with a football-themed board game because of our team's experience with the subject matter (Arthur Franz IV began coaching football in 1992 and has over 10 years' experience). It was a natural fit, but our interests are more diverse than merely sports-themed board games. Uplink Underground Games is currently working on designs in a variety of topics, from mythology to Hollywood to aerial combat. With a success on this project, we hope to prove to you that we are both serious about games and worthy of your investment.

Risks and challenges

Our risks and challenges are the same that you'd expect from first-time game publishers, though we feel we have a strong foundation of research, networking, and business acumen to offset this.

We have two contingency plans for printing based on our funding goal. If we limp over the finish line, we know we will have enough capital to fulfill our orders through a service like The Game Crafter. In fact, we have already laid out the printable files on The Game Crafter and are prepared to fulfill within 1-2 weeks of funding. However, that is a "break even" scenario that gets our game in your hands and starts buzz about our company, but doesn't help launch our business as a whole.

The second scenario is that we fund somewhat above our target, allowing us to take advantage of a larger order size with an overseas printer. This plan has us able to fulfill approximately 3 months after funding, as the layout and design of the game is 99% done (rule book is written but is still needing graphic design). We know the final product will be high quality with this option.

As for fulfillment with the second option, we are looking closely at Amazon Fulfillment Services (it is very attractive to have Amazon Prime members get free 2-day shipping for our game) and/or Print Ninja's fulfillment option. As always, we need to see what funding we have available before making that decision.

While we are designing and prototyping other games, "Breakaway Football" is Uplink Underground Games' only active print project. Once we fund, all our attention will be focused on fulfilling the orders as quickly as possible.

Our team is very smart and capable. Arthur Franz IV is a Learning & Development Manager with a major oil company and is experienced at managing large projects that come in on time and on budget. Mark Burlet and Ben Jennings are both IT professionals with extensive experience in meeting deadlines. We have completed the layout of the components for the core game, mapped out the plan for developing the expansion content, and are ready to deliver this fun experience to your doorstep. All we need now is your support!

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $200 or more
About $200

Team Owner

Full core game (signed by the Underground) plus all expansions, including invitation to the exclusive launch party in New Orleans (time and place TBA). Full credit on the website and in the official rulebook.
Each donor at this level will be listed in the rules, and all related documentation, as the official "Owner" of one of the teams.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $500 or more
About $500

Hall of Fame

Full core game (signed by the Underground) plus all expansions, including invitation to the exclusive launch party in New Orleans (time and place TBA). Full credit on the website and in the official rulebook.
In addition, the official League Championship trophy will be named in your honor.